The Chinese General and the Irish VC

Sometimes stories are so odd that you cannot believe them to be true – and yet they are.

Let's start with Morris Cohen Morris Abraham "Two-Gun" Cohen (1887 - 1970) was a Jewish soldier and adventurer who became aide-de-camp to the Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen and a major-general in the Chinese army. I bet you’ve never heard of him …..and for all his various adventures, he is buried in Blackley Cemetery in Manchester.
A more mundane end I could not think of.

Here are the highlights from his life.

He was somewhat of a troublemaker as a youngster. The story goes that his parents shipped him off to Canada in the hope of reforming him. According to Wikipedia he “became friendly with some of the Chinese exiles who had come to work on the Canadian Pacific Railways, and in Saskatoon came to the aid of a Chinese restaurant owner who was being robbed. Such an act was unheard of at the time, as few white men ever came to the aid of the Chinese. The Chinese welcomed Cohen into their fold and eventually invited him to join the Tongmenghui, Sun Yat-sen's anti-Manchu organization”

In 1922 he was hired by Sun Yat-sen and lived in Shanghai, training Sun's small armed forces to box and shoot, as well as gun running. He told people that he was an acting colonel in Sun Yat-sen's army. He was known in China as Mah Kun (get it?)

He became one of Sun's main protectors, shadowing the Chinese leader to conferences and war zones. After one battle where he was nicked by a bullet, Cohen started carrying a second gun. The western community were intrigued by Sun's gun-toting protector and began calling him "Two-Gun Cohen." Sun Yat-sen died in 1925 and his successor, Chiang Kai-Shek kept Cohen on as chief of intelligence. After the death of Dr. Sun, the Legislative Yuan promoted Cohen to the rank of General.

When the Japanese invaded China in 1937, Cohen once again became a gun runner, working for the Chinese, and even for British Intelligence.  Unsurprisingly he was finally captured by the Japanese. Amazingly, though, he was released in a prisoner exchange in 1943, and after the war went to live in Canada, but kept his links with China because of his past relationship with Sun Yat Sen.

 In 1947 when the United Nations began the debate on the UN Resolution on the Partition of Palestine, Morris Cohen flew to San Francisco and persuaded the head of the Republic of China Chinese delegation to abstain from voting, when he learned they planned to oppose partition.

In his later years he moved to Manchester to be close to family, and when he died in 1970 was buried at Blackley Cemetery, North Manchester. His gravestone is written in Hebrew, English, and Chinese. Part of it states “This is the tomb of MAH KUN inscribed by Soon Ling Chin Vice Chairman of the Peoples Republic of China”

We are told that representatives of both sides of the China conflict attended the funeral.

Now for John Patrick Keneally

In April 1943, John Patrick Kenneally, was a Bren gunner with the the Irish Guards during the latter phase of the Tunisian campaign. He charged the enemy time after time over a few days to save his fellow soldiers, even when wounded in the leg, and for this act of bravery was awarded the VC.
  Kenneally had deserted his Regiment in 1939, and joined the Irish Guards after having seen their comradeship, and become enamoured with them.

By hook and by crook he got his way, finally leaving the Irish Guards as a Sergeant in 1948, and went into the motor trade – but he always kept his links with the Irish Guards

Indeed When Kenneally died, a lone Irish Piper played above his grave

Winston Churchill's mentioned him in 1945 in a speech when he was showing how the Irish had played their part in the war. “When I think of these days I think also of other episodes and personalities. I do not forget Lieutenant-Commander Esmonde V.C., D.S.O., Lance-Corporal Kenneally, V.C., Captain Fegen V.C., and other Irish heroes that I could easily recite”

So far so good.

Except that his name wasn’t John Patrick Kenneally. It was Leslie Jackson, He was the product of a liaison between Gertrude Robinson, and a wealthy Mancunian Jewish textile manufacturer, Neville Blond.
Blond was noteworthy in that he made underwear for Marks and Spencer’s, married Elaine Marks of M&S, was a massive supporter of the Arts, was according to one source, the first Jew to be commissioned into the Household Cavalry, and funded Private Eye in its early days.

Blond supported Jackson in private school, but if we now fast forward, having fallen in love with the Irish Guards, according to the Irish Military History Society “threw in his lot with a bunch of Irish labourers. One of the men acquired for him the identity card and National Insurance number of an Irish colleague who had returned home and Leslie Jackson had a new identity - John Patrick Kenneally. This was a turning point. With a fine new Irish name he felt he was entitled to join the Irish Guards. He travelled to Manchester, invented a Tipperary childhood for himself and was fully accepted.

Indeed after winning his VC he said that he was worried that he was “bound to be rumbled”
As for his mother Kenneally clearly had little to do with her after he left home. In his autobiography he described her as a “high class whore”, although she is described by Chris Sutton of the Balsall Heath History Society (Balsall Heath being  where Kenneally was born) as the 18-year-old daughter of a Blackpool pharmacist.

Certainly there was no familial feeling. Kenneally later told how he had contacted his father after winning the VC but "He told me how proud he was, gave me £10 and showed me the door.". That would be in character for Blond. He wasn’t big on family

So a war hero who was very proud of being Irish, but who did not have a drop of Irish blood in him. He did have a drop of Jewish blood, though.

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